I bought and restored the outside of this Japanese or Chinese lacquer cabinet 2 years ago. I bought it at an estate sale, that had a lot of asian art, furniture and sculptures. I have no idea how old it is; I bought it more because I liked it rather than hoping it had value. The edges were very chipped and dinged, which is the part I repaired. Structurally it is sound.

I’d like to use it as a jewelry armoire with thin shelves spaced close together and then use shallow trays with dividers to slide in and out. The shelves will not be holding much weight.

I’d like to install some more shelves. But because I don’t know how fragile the lacquer or wood is, or if the piece has value, I hesitate to drill into the sides. I would like to come up with something that won’t permanently alter the inside.

The lacquer layer on top of the wood is fairly thick (at least on the outside) compared to modern pieces I have. I could tell this due to the chips I filled in.

It has one shelf on the inside, which rests on shelf pins set into holes. Unlike regular shelf pins, these are threaded and the holes contain a brass sleeve threaded on the inside. I’ve never see this before. The lacquer around the hole started immediately chipping and flaking away, though, just from my removing the pin and replacing it.

For some reason I am stumped about how to design this. I’ve built a fair number of things out of wood, but I am not a woodworker. I have a drill press but no power saws.

Have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Sorry about the lack of photos. It was hard to shoot, being all black inside. Then I couldn't get the photos from my computer to attach in the normal way, so tried Tinypic (what I used to use before Gardenweb became Houzz), but even with the URL pasted in, no photos showed up. At least I can't see them. Hopefully I have explained it well enough.